Brain Lemon

I would like to share a small experience I had yesterday, and what I feel it means for the Tea Party movement as a whole.

Yesterday, a list that I have been on sent out one of the most ridiculous birther pieces I have yet seen.  It included full-blown pictures of Obama’s supposed Kenyan birth certificate, along with the farcical assertion that his Hawaiian certificate was “forged”.  I immediately emailed the list owner, asking him why he would send out this nonsense.  His reaction?  In what barely amounted to English, he ended up challenging me to meet him face to face, if I was “man enough”.  Really – this was a reaction expected of a child, not a fully grown man.

I had to reach the conclusion, then, that at least this one group has been completely taken over by birthers, and I think that many groups around the country have suffered the same fate.  They are indeed like a disease that slowly infiltrates a group, turning otherwise intelligent people into raving loons.  And every group they take over quickly turns into a conspiracy-theory cesspool that has no hope of being a legitimate player in politics.  It is like a cancer, and once it takes the brain, the creature is rendered useless and dead.

It is my firm position, then, that this sickness must be cut off immediately whenever it is discovered.  Unfortunately, this can be tough, as it can hit even otherwise stalwart folks, who might otherwise be allies and sources of information.  But once birtherism earns its place as a legitimate idea in someone’s mind, they are compromised and must be cut off for the good of the movement as a whole.  If we do not remove this ugliness from our midst, it will continue to infect and eventually destroy the long-term viability of the Tea Party movement.

My policy, then, is what I would also urge others to do – when you hear someone talking about birtherism, do a little probing, and if you find that this person genuinely believes Obama is not a citizen, cut off ties.  If you follow them on Twitter, unfollow them, even block them if you have to. You can argue with them if you so desire, but most likely to no avail.  Their minds have been captured by what can be referred to as Obama Derangement Syndrome – that is, a tendency to believe literally insane things about Obama due to an intense personal hatred of him.

The quicker we do this, the sooner we can minimize the damage done overall.  I would, then, strongly advocate a no-tolerance policy.  It is the only way we can avoid becoming a laughingstock and maintain the integrity needed to be a long-term political player.

With “Snowmageddon” upon us in the Northeast, and 20+ inches of snow on the ground, I’ve had a couple days to spend inside.  Needless to say, being a Twitter addict, I spent a lot of my time keeping up on the latest tweets.  Today’s big event this morning was the revelation that Debra Medina, a candidate running for governor in Texas, is potentially a 9/11 “truther”.  This came to light during an interview on the Glenn Beck show, and while Medina did not actually admit to being a truther, she certainly left the door open and gave a very unsatisfactory answer – essentially, that, nine years after the fact, she still did not have all the facts and couldn’t make a determination about what happened that day.

Of course this triggered the usual folks calling in to defend her, and trutherism in general.  One caller said that not voting for someone because they believe in this conspiracy is like not voting for someone because they are pro-choice.  I’d say believing that the federal government deliberately murdered thousands of Americans on 9/11 is in a bit of a different class.  To actually accept such a proposition, you’d have to believe in a widespread conspiracy that stretches over thousands of people, nine years, and all levels of government.  To put it one way… that’s pretty damn insane.  Going beyond the sheer irrationality of trutherism, it also requires one to believe that the government is not just incompetent or corrupt, but damn near evil.  A government that would commit and cover up 9/11 is a government that is not worthy of any support, and must instead be actively fought as a direct threat to life and limb.  To summarize, being a truther means you are divorced from reality, and in some cases, you could be actually dangerous.  It is not something to take in stride.

Unfortunately, this incident has once again brought up the horrible tendency of libertarians, and especially those that support Ron Paul, to believe in all manner of nutty conspiracies.  I say this with sadness as I agree with Ron Paul on many things and consider myself, largely, a libertarian.  In my mind, birthers are in much the same boat in terms of being logic-challenged, irrational people.  While 9/11 trutherism is certainly worse than birtherism in many ways, both are pure and simple conspiracy theories – they are beliefs  in massive, secretive plots involving a huge number of people.  Both rely on disproven and often ridiculous claims that run contrary to all available evidence and scientific fact.  And both must be actively fought and expunged from any reasonable, well-intentioned movement.  They are like cancers that will only metastasize and grow if left to fester.

All of these conspiracy nuts only serve to give the rest of us a bad name.  There are many libertarian-leaning folks who don’t believe George Bush or the Jews are behind 9/11, or that 40 years ago some amazingly predictive folks saw to cover up Barack Obama’s place of birth.  There are many of use who actually just believe that a small government is best, that the free market is dynamic and transformative, and that individual liberty is important to defend.  Every time some nut goes off on some crazy tangent, it gives our enemies fodder to embarrass us and combat the legitimacy of the entire movement.  And the sad fact is, I think truthers and birthers are (hopefully) only a small percentage – they are just the most radical and vocal.  The rest of us, AKA the sane ones, need to get these people straight or get rid of them.  If we don’t, we risk letting a few crazies sabotage the whole thing.  And that would be a tragedy of massive proportions.